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THE PADMAN OF INDIA

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why don't we call menstruation by its name? cultural taboo plays a major role in this stigma which lead to significant challenges in menstruation management, adverse reproductive health outcomes, social ostracization, disease and even death. Menstruation stigma is more like a misogyny.
These taboos make us believe that menstruation is meant to be hidden and is something shameful.
These taboos are quite evident in Quran, the Bible and in the first latin encyclopedia (73 AD), which comprises most of the cultures in the world. Half of the adolescent are not aware of what menstruation is when they got their first period and this is quite shocking !

South Asian countries are most affected by these taboo. One of those countries is India, a young nation with world's largest democracy and cultural diversity. Apparently due to this diverse culture background, Indian woman has to face many restrictions and ignorance during the menstruation phase. As we go by statistics 70% of the woman do not have access to sanitary pads and still uses old rags to soak the flow. Ignorance and poverty makes women resort to using sand, sawdust and even ash to stem their period.

In 1998, frustrated by these taboos and overpriced sanitary pads back then, Arunachalam Muruganantham , the son of poor hand loom weaver in south India has took the responsibility to produce new affordable pads by himself. Starting results were devastating but soon he took the challenge to device more efficient pads by experimenting his own ideas in his family itself. Refused by his family members to test the experimental pads he turned towards the girls student to test the pads and give him feedback. He even has to try his experimental pads on himself to come up with a solution with the material used. Initially he has to face criticism in the society and his own wife left the home to live with her mother amid disapproval by the society. But Murga didn't give up as he knew about the revolutionary road he has taken on a mission to produce low-cost sanitary pads for the girls in the country. It took him 2 years of continuous struggle to come up with the right material and process to design the pads with machines having production cost 500% less than imported machines . He refused to commercialise the machines and sold thousands of machines to all the states in the country at minimal rate.
Today, he is a well known social entrepreneur and is widely praised as a key step in changing women's lives in India and named one of the TIME MAGAZINE's 100 most influential people worldwide.

Padman is also an upcoming 2018 Indian biographical comedy-drama film

A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself. THE PADMAN OF INDIA